I want a man made of wicker

In a few weeks’ time, “Wicker” – literally “wicker”, like the material used to create, in late medieval rural England, a perfect, attentive and caring husband for the fishmonger Olivia Colman – will be in cinemas. A fantasy comedy, of course, but one which (also) celebrates the most extraordinary craftsmanship, albeit in a paradoxical way. When the mastery of manual labour reaches such technical heights, it inspires and arouses a multitude of desires – even sexual ones (the film is full of highly inappropriate jokes) – towards a fictional man, even though Alexander Skarsgård does not hide sufficiently beneath those woven willow branches to escape his fans. It is a shame that the film is not featured in any section of the Venice Film Festival because, despite the relative restraint of the Venetian red carpet, the rampant ‘method dressing’ would have treated us to some surprises in terms of styling, given that fashion features plenty of ‘weaves’ – and not just metaphorical ones.

Wicker, rattan and raffia have been used so frequently in fashion (there are plenty of examples even at the latest edition of Homo Faber, which has just opened) that they immediately trigger a chain of associations and a tally of who did what. I must confess, however, that they also trigger an immediate urge to save an image of Skarsgård—more statuesque than ever, even in a large basket version—for an upcoming mood board, alongside a vintage 1950s bucket bag that I had purchased and until now forgotten, and a 1960s girl’s handbag that has suffered the same fate. The mind then wanders to Gianfranco Ferré and a dress that was admired—with a touch of Stendhal syndrome—in the archives of the fashion house’s historic headquarters: a corset and crinoline covered in black wicker (which is hoped to still be available at the Gianfranco Ferré Research Centre), or his variations on the Vienna straw weave for Christian Dior. From this game of memory, I immediately move on—through self-induced conditioning—to a reinterpretation for an imminent collection. The search for quick inspiration is, for those of us who work not only ‘in’ but also ‘on’ fashion, almost an automatic reflex – a dangerous mechanism because it inevitably leads us to translate any suggestion into ready-to-use material, like a computer that processes and metabolises every piece of data absorbed for the sake of efficiency. More calm is needed, yet instead we find ourselves dumping onto the drawing board everything we have seen, read, photographed, tasted, encountered and come across during the summer holidays – holidays that are becoming ever hotter, more exhausting and filled with jumbled thoughts. 

Those of us who design for others, under ever-tightening deadlines, should strive not to lose ourselves in the endless twists and turns of forced stylistic exploration, but rather seek to clear our minds, absorb and observe without any immediate purpose, confident that something will emerge in the long run.